Monday, March 15, 2004

I never thought I'd just want to do laundry so badly

The dryer had a 4-prong cord. The wall had a 3-prong hole. I managed to fix that easily enough, but cracked after attempting to put the dryer vent hose back on and being thwarted by the hose clamp repeatedly. ManThing came home to find me curled up in fetal position with the Cat on our bed. He took over that task, defeated the evil hose clamp, and so we decided to try out the whole laundry thing.

It was fine until spin cycle.

Water splattering on the floor isn't something you want to hear. Especially on hardwoods. I turn off the washer and yell for ManThing. Chaos ensues.

Theory #1: The drain hose isn't in the pipe far enough. There is much cramming and gnashing of teeth. That sucker wasn't going any farther in. It had "ribs" (hee. ribs.) at the top which seemed to be keeping it from going in.

Theory #2: If we cut one or two of the ribs off, it will fit better. Uh uh.

Theory #3: ManThing runs to the hardware store and comes back with this rubber contraption for us to put around the drain hose and shove it back in the pipe. It held the hose in, but water still kept coming out of the top.

During all of these experiments, ManThing is being held captive behind the washer. Someone had to be back there in case the water erupted again at the onset of drainage- which it did every time. When I say captive, it is in a literal sense, because the water heater is directly above the washer and the hoses won't reach far enough to allow walking space. I ran off and got the camera while he stood there and looked like he was doing obscene things to a major household appliance.

At this point, we decided we were out of our element and would call a plumber the next day. Since we still had a washer full of clothes- and water- we began the tedious task of transferring clothes into the dryer. I would take a few pieces of sopping wet laundry, wring them out, and hand them to ManThing to take out into the garage, where the dryer lives. This took about 20 minutes, as the washer was completely full.

At some time during all of this, I had managed to bump one of the knobs on the gas stove, and gas was coming from one of the burners. We smelled the gas, but didn't realize where it was coming from, and so completely freaked out since we were tinkering around below the gas water heater. Somehow the pilot light went out, and it took half an hour to figure out how the hell to get it lit again.

We had to break down and make the "Daddy call" to Chris's dad, since neither of us knew anything about this sort of situation, and were convinced we were going to blow ourselves up.